A peek into the public’s outraged protest over the legislature’s secretive process to redraw state legislative and Congressional maps again.
Concerned citizens from around North Carolina turned out last week to speak up against the state legislature’s secretive process to redraw state legislative and Congressional maps yet again. With no maps available for public review, and no clear guidelines for the legislature’s redrawing process, it seemed clear that the quickly called and limited public hearings were intended as window dressing for plans to gerrymander the maps to safeguard and expand current pro-polluter majorities.
Participants in the hearings were not going to let this abuse of democracy pass without protest. “[T]he vast majority of comments came from people who said gerrymandering makes the state’s politics worse. Multiple people, including Durham activist Lawrence Davis, made reference to the legislature’s history of passing maps that courts have struck down as unconstitutional due to racial gerrymandering.”
“I’m asking for you guys to draw the maps accurately and fairly, to reflect our communities,” Davis said.
“You are not doing the people’s business,” added Hilary Harris Klein, a civil rights attorney with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice who was heavily involved in the 2021 gerrymandering lawsuit. “And by entrenching your own power, you are denying us the responsive government this country was founded on.”
Get a flavor of the public’s outraged protest from clips of five speeches at the hearings.
Over 50 North Carolina groups, including the NC League of Conservation Voters (NCLCV) signed a letter of protest to legislators over the prospects for yet another round of partisan gerrymandering. “Open and transparent redistricting is not only fundamental to a representative democracy, but it is also crucial to strengthening trust in our elected officials and government,” the letter states. “The recent actions (and inactions) of legislative leaders make us deeply concerned that the North Carolina General Assembly will once again fail at its responsibility to create a robust, transparent, and thoughtful process for receiving vital public input to draw new maps.”
This pro-polluter legislative majority seems determined to ensure that yet more rounds of acrimonious litigation substitute for an open public process of drawing fair maps.
